The Mechanical Turk, also known as theAutomaton Chess Player (German:Schachtürke,lit. 'chess Turk';Hungarian:A Török), or simplythe Turk, was achess-playing machine, first displayed in 1770, whichappeared to be able to play a strong game of chess autonomously, but whose pieces were in reality moved via levers and magnets by achess master hidden in its lower cavity. The machine was toured and exhibited for 84 years as anautomaton, and continued giving occasional exhibitions until 1854, when it was destroyed in a fire. In 1857, an article published by the owner's son provided the first full explanation of the mechanism, which had been widely suspected to be ahoax but never accurately described while the machine still existed.
Constructed byWolfgang von Kempelen to impress EmpressMaria Theresa of Austria, the Turk won most games, including those against statesmen such asNapoleon Bonaparte andBenjamin Franklin. It was purchased in 1804 byJohann Nepomuk Mälzel, who continued to exhibit it. Chess masters who operated it over this later period includedJohann Allgaier,Boncourt,Aaron Alexandre,William Lewis,Jacques Mouret andWilliam Schlumberger, but its operators during Kempelen's original tour remain unknown. The device not only played well in games of chess but also could perform theknight's tour, a puzzle that required the player to move aknight to visit every square of a chessboard exactly once.
A performance in 1769 by the French illusionistFrançois Pelletier at the court ofMaria Theresa of Austria inSchönbrunn Palace promptedWolfgang von Kempelen to promise to return to the Palace within a year with an invention that would surpass Pelletier's illusions.[2]
The result was the Automaton Chess Player,[4][5] later known as the Turk, which Kempelen brought to a working state within 1769 and completed in spring 1770.[6][a] The machine consisted of a life-sizedmodel of a human head and torso, with a black beard and grey eyes,[9] and dressed inOttoman robes and aturban – "the traditional costume", according to the technology writerTom Standage, "of anorientalsorcerer". Its left arm held a long Ottoman smoking pipe when at rest, while its right lay on a cabinet[10] that was "three feet and a half long, two feet deep, and two and a half feet high".[11][b] Placed on the top of the cabinet was a chessboard. The front of the cabinet consisted of three doors, an opening and a drawer, which could be opened to reveal a red and whiteivory chess set.[12]
The interior of the machine had complications designed to mislead observers.[13] When opened on the left, the front doors of the cabinet exposed a number of gears and cogs resemblingclockwork. The section was designed so that if the back doors of the cabinet were open at the same time one could see through the machine. The other side of the cabinet did not house machinery; instead it contained a red cushion and some removable parts, as well asbrass structures. This too was designed to provide a clear line of vision through the machine. Underneath the robes of the Ottoman model, two other doors were hidden. These also exposed clockwork machinery and provided a similarly unobstructed view through the machine. The design allowed the presenter of the machine to open every available door to the public, to maintain the illusion of a purely clockwork mechanism.[14]
Neither the clockwork visible on the left side of the machine nor the drawer that housed the chess set extended fully to the rear of the cabinet; they instead went only one-third of the way. A sliding seat was also installed, allowing the operator inside to move from place to place and thus evade observation as the presenter opened various doors. The sliding of the seat caused dummy machinery to slide into its place to further conceal the person inside the cabinet.[15]
The chessboard on the top of the cabinet was thin enough to allow magnetic attraction. Each chess piece had a small, strong magnet attached to its base, and when placed on the board it would attract a magnet attached to a string under its place on the board. This allowed the operator inside the machine to see which pieces moved where on the chessboard.[16] The underside of the chessboard was marked with squares numbered 1 to 64, helping the operator to see which places on the board were affected by a player's move.[17] The internal magnets were positioned so that outside magnetic forces would not influence them, and Kempelen would often allow a large magnet to sit at the side of the board in an attempt to show that the machine was not influenced by magnetism.[18]
As a further means of misdirection, the Turk came with a small wooden coffin-like box that the presenter would place on the top of the cabinet.[13]Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a later owner of the machine, did not use the box,[19] but Kempelen often peered into it during play, suggesting that it controlled some aspect of the machine. Some believed the box to have supernatural power;Karl Gottlieb von Windisch wrote in his 1784 bookInanimate Reason that"[o]ne old lady, in particular, who had not forgotten the tales she had been told in her youth . . . went and hid herself in a window seat, as distant as she could from theevil spirit, which she firmly believedpossessed the machine."[20]
The interior also contained apegboard chessboard connected by something like apantograph to the model's left arm. The metal pointer on the pantograph moved over the interior chessboard and would simultaneously move the arm of the Turk over the chessboard on the cabinet. The range of motion allowed the operator to move the Turk's arm up and down, while turning the lever would open and close the Turk's hand, allowing it to grasp the pieces on the board. The board and mechanism were visible to the operator by candlelight.[21] Other parts of the machinery made a clockwork sound when the Turk made a move, further adding to the machinery illusion;[22] and the Turk could make various facial expressions.[23] Avoice box was added following the Turk's acquisition by Mälzel, allowing the machine to say"Échec!" (French for "Check!") during games.[24]
The operator inside the machine had tools to assist in communicating with the presenter. Two brass discs equipped with numbers were positioned opposite each other on the inside and outside of the cabinet. A rod rotated the discs to a desired number, which acted as a code between the two.[25]
The Turk made its debut in 1770 atSchönbrunn Palace, about six months after Pelletier's act. Kempelen addressed the court, presenting what he had built, and began the demonstration of the machine and its parts. Kempelen began every showing of the Turk by opening the doors and drawers of the cabinet, allowing members of the audience to inspect the machine. He would then announce that the machine was ready for a challenger.[12]
Kempelen insisted that the Turk would use the white pieces and have the first move. (Theconvention that White moves first was not yet established, so there was no redundancy.) Between moves, the Turk kept its left arm on the cushion. It couldnod twice if it threatened its opponent'squeen and three times upon placing theking incheck. If an opponent made an illegal move, the Turk would shake its head, move the piece back and make its own move, thus forcing a forfeit of its opponent's move.[26]Louis Dutens, a traveller who observed a showing of the Turk, "attempted to practice a small deception, by giving the Queen the move of a Knight, but my mechanic opponent was not to be so imposed on; he took up my Queen and replaced her in the square she had been removed from".[27] Kempelen made it a point to traverse the room during the match, and invited observers to bring magnets and iron bars to the cabinet to test whether the machine operated via alodestone.[28]
The first person to play against the Turk wasLudwig von Cobenzl, an Austriancourtier at the palace. Along with other challengers that day, he was quickly defeated, with observers of the match stating that the machine played aggressively and typically beat its opponents within thirty minutes.[30]
Another part of the machine's exhibition was the completion of theknight's tour, a famed puzzle requiring the player to move a knight around a chessboard, visiting each square once along the way. While most experienced chess players of the time still struggled with this, the Turk could complete the tour without any difficulty from any starting point thanks to a pegboard marked with a closed-loop solution (a "reentrant tour").[29] Furthermore, the Turk could converse with spectators using a letterboard. The operator during the period when Kempelen presented the machine at Schönbrunn Palace, whose identity is unknown,[31] was able to do this in English, French and German.Carl Friedrich Hindenburg, a mathematician, kept a record of the conversations during the Turk's time in Leipzig and published it in 1784.[32] Topics of questions put to and answered by the Turk included its age, marital status and secret workings.[33]
Following word of its debut, interest in the machine grew across Europe. However, Kempelen avoided exhibiting the Turk, often lying about its repair status to prospective challengers. Von Windisch wrote that Kempelen "refused to gratify his friends, and many curious people of different countries, who wished to see this boasted machine, under a pretence that it had received damage by being removed from place to place".[34] In the decade following its debut at Schönbrunn Palace, the Turk only played one opponent,Robert Murray Keith, a Scottish diplomat, and Kempelen went as far as dismantling the Turk entirely following the pair of games.[35] He was quoted dismissing the invention as a mere trifle,[c] as he was not pleased with its popularity and preferred to continue work on machines that replicated human speech.[37]
In 1781, Kempelen was ordered byEmperor Joseph II to reconstruct the Turk and deliver it to Vienna for a state visit from Grand DukePaul of Russia and his wife. The appearance was so successful that the Grand Duke suggested a tour of Europe for the Turk, a request to which Kempelen reluctantly agreed.[38]
The Turk began its European tour in April 1783, in France. A stop atVersailles beginning on 17 April preceded an exhibition in Paris, where it lost a match to theDuke of Bouillon.[39] Upon arrival in Paris in May, it was displayed to the public and played a variety of opponents, including a lawyer namedMr Bernard, one of five French players regarded as of second rank.[40] Demands increased for a match withFrançois-André Danican Philidor, who withLegall de Kermeur was considered the best chess player of his time.[41] Moving to theCafé de la Régence, the machine played many of the most skilled players, often losing (e.g. against Bernard andVerdoni),[42] until securing a match with Philidor at theAcadémie des Sciences. While Philidor won his match with the Turk, Philidor's son noted that his father called it "his most fatiguing game of chess ever".[43] The Turk's final game in Paris was againstBenjamin Franklin, then the American ambassador to France. Franklin reportedly enjoyed the game with the Turk and remained interested in the machine for the rest of his life, keeping a copy ofPhilip Thicknesse's bookThe Speaking Figure and the Automaton Chess Player, Exposed and Detected in his personal library.[44]
Following his tour of Paris, Kempelen moved the Turk to London, where it was exhibited daily for fiveshillings. Thicknesse was asceptic and sought out the Turk in an attempt to expose its inner workings.[45] While he respected Kempelen as "a very ingenious man",[46] he asserted that the Turk was an elaborate hoax with a small child inside the machine,[47] describing the machine as "a complicated piece of clockwork . . . which is nothing more, than one, of many other ingenious devices, to misguide and delude the observers".[48] In a popular book first published in 1784, and largely devoted to the tricks ofJoseph Pinetti,Henri Decremps has "Van Estin" (a fictionalized version of Kempelen) attribute the operation of "an automaton chess player, similar to the one shewn at Paris and Vienna, by a German mechanick" to "a dwarf, a famous chess player, who was hidden in the commode".[49][50]
After a year in London, Kempelen and the Turk travelled to Leipzig, stopping in various European cities along the way. From Leipzig, they went toDresden, whereJoseph Friedrich Freiherr von Racknitz viewed the machine and published his findings with illustrations showing how he believed it operated.[51] They then moved to Amsterdam, after which Kempelen is said to have accepted an invitation to theSanssouci palace inPotsdam.Frederick is said to have enjoyed the Turk so much that he paid a large sum to Kempelen in exchange for its secrets. Frederick never divulged these but was reportedly disappointed to learn how the machine worked.[52] However, this story is apocryphal: there is no evidence of the Turk's encounter with Frederick, the first mention of which comes in the early 19th century, by which time the Turk was incorrectly said to have played againstGeorge III of Great Britain.[53] It seems most likely that the machine stayed dormant at Schönbrunn Palace for over two decades, although Kempelen attempted unsuccessfully to sell it in the final years before his death at 70 on 26 March 1804.[54]
Following the death of Kempelen, the Turk remained unexhibited until 1805, when Kempelen's son decided to sell it toJohann Nepomuk Mälzel, aBavarian musician with an interest in machines and devices. Mälzel, whose successes included patenting a form ofmetronome, had tried to buy the Turk before Kempelen's death. That attempt failed, owing to Kempelen's asking price of 20,000francs; his son sold the machine to Mälzel for half this sum.[55] On acquiring the Turk, Mälzel learned how it worked and returned it to working order. His goal was to make explaining the Turk a greater challenge. The completion of this task took ten years, during which the Turk still made appearances, most notably withNapoleon Bonaparte.[56]
In 1809, Napoleon I of France arrived atSchönbrunn Palace to play the Turk. The details of the encounter have been published over the years in numerous accounts, among which even those bySilas Mitchell and George Allen (seebelow) are contradictory (Allen's being the more plausible).[57] According to Bradley Ewart, it is believed that the Turk sat at its cabinet, and Napoleon sat at a separate chess table. Napoleon's table was in a roped-off area and he was not allowed to cross into the Turk's area, with Mälzel crossing back and forth to make each player's move and allowing a clear view for the spectators. According to a brief eyewitness report,[58] the Turk made a gesture with his hand to Napoleon before the start of the match. In a surprise move, Napoleon took the first turn instead of allowing the Turk to make the first move, as was usual; but Mälzel allowed the game to continue. Shortly thereafter, Napoleon attempted an illegal move. The Turk returned the piece to its original place and continued the game. Napoleon attempted the illegal move a second time, and the Turk responded by removing the piece from the board entirely and taking its turn. Napoleon then attempted the move a third time, the Turk responding with a sweep of its arm, knocking all the pieces off the board. This reportedly amused Napoleon, who then played a real game with the machine, completing nineteen moves before tipping over his king in surrender.[59] Alternative versions of the story include playing the machine at a later time, playing one game with a magnet on the board, or playing a game with ashawl around the head and body of the Turk in an attempt to obscure its vision.[60] – all of them probably apocryphal, in contrast to the stories that he was a bad loser and often indulgently allowed to win by stronger opponents.[61]
In 1811, Mälzel brought the Turk to Milan for a performance withEugène de Beauharnais, Prince ofVenice and Viceroy ofItaly. Beauharnais enjoyed the machine so much that he offered to buy it from Mälzel. After some protracted bargaining, Beauharnais acquired the Turk for 30,000francs – three times what Mälzel had paid – and kept it for four years. In 1815, Mälzel returned to Beauharnais inMunich and asked to buy back the Turk. There are differing accounts of the conditions of the sale.[d][e]
As he left Bavaria with the Turk, Mälzel was once again "travelling showman of the wooden genius. Other automata were adopted into the family, and a handsome income was realised by their ingenious proprietor."[62] He brought the Turk back to Paris, whereBoncourt is thought to have been its primary operator,[62] and where Mälzel made the acquaintance of many of the leading chess players atCafé de la Régence. He stayed in France with the Turk until 1818, when he moved to London and held a number of performances with it and many of his other machines. In London, Mälzel and his act received much press, and he continued to improve the machine,[66] ultimately installing a voice box so that it could say"Échec!" when placing a player in check.[67]
In 1819, Mälzel took the Turk on a tour of the United Kingdom. There were several new developments in the act, such as allowing the opponent the first move and eliminating the king's bishop'spawn from the Turk's pieces. Thispawn handicap created further interest in the Turk, and spawned a book by W. Hunneman chronicling these matches.[68][69] Despite the handicap, the Turk (operated byMouret at the time)[70] ended up with forty-five victories, three losses and twostalemates.[71]
The appearances of the Turk were profitable for Mälzel, and he continued by taking it and his other machines to the United States. In 1826, he opened an exhibition inNew York (in the National Hotel, on 112Broadway) that was very popular, averaging a hundred people in April, while in May "the hall was filled, and sometimes two hundred were turned away for lack of seats".[72] It prompted many newspaper articles and anonymous threats of exposure of the hoax. Mälzel's problem was finding a talented operator for the machine,[73] having trained an unknown woman in France before touring the United States. The "subsistence" in Paris of a former operator fromAlsace,William Schlumberger "was both scanty and precarious";[74] and Mälzel induced him to come toBoston. As the Turk's main operator in the new world, Schlumberger "considered himself to have been fairly and kindly treated by Maelzel, and remained faithfully attached to his person and his interests to the last".[75]
Upon Schlumberger's arrival, the Turk debuted in Boston, in theJulien Hall.[76] Mälzel claimed that "the players of Boston are at least equal to those of New York" and promised that in Boston the Turk would offer to play not onlyendgames but also full games.[77] The Turk was exhibited in Boston for several weeks,[78] and the tour moved toPhiladelphia for nearly three months,[79] during which period it "lost a full game over the course of two exhibitions to a 'Mrs. Fisher', described in the front-page[Baltimore]Gazette headline as a 'Lady' of the city".[80] Following Philadelphia, the Turk moved toBaltimore, where it played for several months, losing a game against the 89-year-oldCharles Carroll, a signer of theDeclaration of Independence.[81][82]
Mälzel continued with exhibitions around the United States until 1828, when he took some time off and visited Europe, returning in 1829. Throughout the 1830s, he continued to tour the United States. InRichmond,Virginia, the Turk was observed byEdgar Allan Poe, writing for theSouthern Literary Messenger. Poe's "Maelzel's chess-player", published in April 1836 (and owing much to a book byDavid Brewster published in 1832),[83][84] is the most famous essay on the Turk, even though many of its hypotheses were incorrect.[f][86] Little or nothing else written on the same subject can "approach [its] literary brilliance".[87] By this time, frequent exhibition of the Turk and publication of numerous descriptions, however mistaken, of its workings and human agency, had reduced interest in it.[88] The star attraction among Mälzel's exhibits was now the highly dramatic "Conflagration of Moscow".[89] Mälzel travelled farther in 1836–37 – toPittsburgh,Cincinnati,Louisville, andNew Orleans in the United States; and toHavana – and back toPhiladelphia, where he spent more time preparing his Moscow diorama.[90]
In November 1837 Mälzel took the Turk on his second tour toHavana. While in Cuba, Schlumberger died ofyellow fever in February 1838, leaving Mälzel without an operator or, as the other members of his company now deserted him, any other assistant. A broken man, deeply in debt and drinking heavily, Mälzel died at sea in July 1838 at the age of 65 during his return trip, leaving his machinery with the ship's captain.[91][92][93]
On the return of the ship on which Mälzel had died, his various machines, including the Turk, fell into the hands of the businessman John Ohl, a friend of his. Ohl attempted to auction off the Turk; but, owing to low bidding, ultimately bought it himself for $400 (equivalent to $12,000 in 2024),[94] and less than half the winning bid for the "Panorama of Moscow",[95] as an investment.[96][g] Only whenJohn Kearsley Mitchell – from Philadelphia, Edgar Allan Poe's personal physician, long deeply curious about the Turk – approached Ohl did the Turk change hands again.[100] However, what Mitchell received turned out to be incomplete:
The five crates were found to contain pieces of Maelzel's other automata . . . mixed in with the components of the Turk, several pieces of which were also missing and had to be retrieved from other boxes in Ohl's warehouse at Lombard Street Wharf. The Turk had lost its clothes, legs, pipe, and part of its head; a list drawn up by Mitchell of "things to be found and looked for" also included the cabinet doors, castors, and chessmen.[101]
Mitchell formed a club to restore the Turk for public appearances, completing the work in 1840.[102]
As interest in the Turk grew, Mitchell and his club donated it to thePhiladelphia Museum (also known as the Chinese Museum) ofCharles Willson Peale. While the Turk still occasionally gave performances – and for the performance on 4 December 1840 was advertised as "[having] been seen by more eyes than any terrestrial object ever exhibited"[95] – these were devoid of professional showmanship and had little appeal. It was eventually relegated to a back corner of the museum and forgotten, until 5 July 1854, when a fire that had started at the National Theater reached the Museum and destroyed the Turk.[103][104] Mitchell's sonSilas Mitchell arrived, but too late: he believed he had heard "through the struggling flames . . . the last words of our departed friend, the sternly whispered, oft repeated syllables,échec! échec!!"[105]
According to James Cook, by the mid-1820s "hundreds, if not thousands, of 'approaches' had been made toward discovering the secret [of the mechanical Turk], many of which were actually very close to the answer".[106] The youngRobert Willis (later a mechanical engineer and architectural historian) carefully observed Mälzel's exhibitions of the Turk, and in an 1821 booklet summarily dismissed some earlier theories: "[I]t has been suggested that [Mälzel] might touch certain springs, or pull 'a wire not much thicker than a hair', or be furnished with a powerful magnet. But such conjectures are unworthy of serious refutation".[107][h] Willis noted anomalies such as the lack of correlation between the degree to which the clockwork was wound up and the number of moves the Turk then executed.[109] He showed how "any person, well skilled in the game, and not exceeding the ordinary bulk or stature, may secretly animate the Automaton"[110] – even if with some inaccuracies, notably that "[the operator's] head being above the table, he will see the chess-board through the waistcoat, as easily as through a veil".[111]
In 1826, the Massachusetts physicianGamaliel Bradford published a booklet,The History and Analysis of the Supposed Automaton Chess Player of M. de Kempelen, in which he considered a number of ways in which the Turk might be directed by Mälzel or another person outside it or by an operator within it. Even if not an automaton, concluded Bradford, "it must be admitted to be one of the most ingenious, & completely successful contrivances, which has ever been offered to the public".[112][113]
The hoax was exposed in 1827 during a match in Baltimore when the unusually high temperature rendered the operator,William Schlumberger, faint. He signalled to Mälzel to stop the game; but before Mälzel could act on this, Schlumberger, in desperation, escaped from the cabinet of the Turk. That he did so was not entirely clear to the audience; however, two teens enjoying a free view of the performance from a nearby rooftop saw and understood what had happened. One told his father, who told theBaltimoreGazette, which published an article on its front page saying that "This ingenious contrivance . . . has at length been discovered by accident to be merely the case in which a human agent has always been concealed, when exhibited to an audience."[i] Although Mälzel withdrew the Turk from his travelling show (which continued with "The Conflagration of Moscow" and "The Trumpeter"), theGazette story had little impact, with George Allen writing:
[N]obody credited the pretended discovery. The world had set its heart upon believing that the secret, which had puzzled mechanicians, mathematicians, and monarchs, for more than half a century, was something quite too deep to be penetrated by a couple of boys. TheNational Intelligencer, of Washington . . . sagaciously treated theGazette article as having emanated from Maelzel himself – "the tale of a discovery was but a clever device of the proprietor to keep alive the interest of the community in his exhibition".[116]
Lesser newspapers, suggests Allen, were too timid to contradict the prestigiousIntelligencer and Mälzel's business was little impacted.[117]
Of the many contemporary books and articles written about the mechanism of the Turk, most were inaccurate and drew incorrect inferences. An exception was "Automate joueur d'échecs", published in the popular magazineLe Magasin pittoresque in 1834,[118] and widely believed to have been informed, or perhaps even written, by one of the Turk's operators,Jacques Mouret.[119][120][8] In 1836,Mathieu de Tournay [de;fr] based a more detailed description of the Turk for the chess magazineLe Palamède on theMagasin pittoresque article.[63][120]
It was not untilSilas Mitchell's article forThe Chess Monthly in 1857 that the secret was fully revealed. Mitchell, son of the final private owner of the Turk,[121] wrote that "perhaps no secret was ever kept as the Turk's has been. Guessed at, in part, many times, no one of the several explanations in our possession has ever practically solved this amusing puzzle". As the Turk had been lost to fire, Mitchell felt that there were "no longer any reasons for concealing from the amateurs of chess, the solution of this ancient enigma".[122] A biographical history about the Chess-player and Mälzel was also presented inWillard Fiske'sThe Book of the First American Chess Congress (1859). The account, "The Automaton Chess-Player in America", was written by the academic George Allen[123] in the form of a letter toWilliam Lewis, a former operator of the Turk.[124]
In 1859, a letter published in thePhiladelphia Sunday Dispatch[125] by William F. Kummer, who worked as an operator under John Mitchell, revealed how a candle inside the cabinet had provided light for the operator. A series of tubes led from the lamp to the turban of the Turk for ventilation. Smoke rising from the turban would be disguised by that from the othercandelabra where the game was played.[126]The American Chess Magazine published an account in 1889 of the Turk's match with Napoleon.[127] The story was basically a review of previous accounts, and a substantive account only came in 1947, whenChess Review published a two-part article byKenneth Harkness and Jack Straley Battell that provided a full history and description of the Turk, complete with new diagrams that synthesized information from previous publications.[128] An article written in 1960 forAmerican Heritage by Ernest Wittenberg[129] provided new diagrams describing how the operator sat inside the cabinet.[130]
Not all the 20th-century accounts were advances. Henry A. Davidson's 1945 bookA Short History of Chess takes seriously Poe's erroneous notion that the player sat inside the Turk figure.[j] In hisThe Machine Plays Chess? (1978), Alex G. Bell opts for "a mind-reading act".[k] Charles Michael Carroll'sThe Great Chess Automaton (1975) focuses more on the studies of the Turk. Bradley Ewart'sChess: Man vs. Machine (1980)[133] discusses the Turk as well as other purported chess-playing automata.[134] It was not until the creation ofDeep Blue,IBM's computer that in 1997 defeated the world (human) champion,[l] that interest increased again, and two more books devoted to the Turk were published: Gerald M. Levitt'sThe Turk, Chess Automaton[68] andTom Standage'sThe Turk.[136]
The Turk's popularity and mystery inspired a number of inventions and imitations.[13] The first appeared while Mälzel was inBaltimore. Created by two brothers named Walker, the "American Chess Player" made its debut in May 1827 in New York.[137] Mälzel viewed the machine and attempted to buy it, but his offer of a 15-game match between the two machines for a stake of $3,000 was declined, as was his offer to buy the machine;[98] and the American Chess Player toured for a number of years, never receiving the fame that Mälzel's machine did and eventually falling into obscurity.[81] Others includedAjeeb, or "The Egyptian", an American imitation built by Charles Hopper thatPresidentGrover Cleveland played in 1885;[138] andMephisto, advertised as the "most famous" machine, of which little is known.[139]
In 1784 the Turk was visited in London by the prebendaryEdmund Cartwright, who was so intrigued that he questioned whether it would be more difficult to construct apower loom than a device that would play chess.[m] Cartwright would patent the prototype for a power loom within the year.[141]
Genuine chess-playing automata did not emerge until 1912, whenEl Ajedrecista was built byLeonardo Torres Quevedo. It was exhibited at the new laboratory ofMécanique physique et expérimentale of theUniversity of Paris, onboulevard Raspail,[138][n] and used electromagnets to winrook andking versus king endgames.[142][143]
The Turk has inspired works of various kinds of fiction. An early example isJean Paul's storyMenschen sind Maschinen der Engel, written in 1785.[144] Its narrator starts by saying that we humans are merely the furniture of the true inhabitants of the world, angels; and it is "obvious [that] our industriousness, which works against our happiness, is conducive to other beings' happiness, whose hands conduct ours as their tools". Chess-playing machines exemplify the building by machines (that is, people) of machines; of which the narrator's description culminates in a "deliberate confusion of chess-playing humans and chess-playing machines", leaving the reader "incessantly bewildered about the status of the story's actors (as well as the reader's own status) as machine or as human".[145]
Fiction has also been passed off as fact.In 1859 an article[146] inLittell's Living Age purported to be an account of the Turk from the celebrated French magicianJean Eugène Robert-Houdin; its content soon reappeared in Robert-Houdin's memoir.[147] Its many errors ranged from mistaken dates to outright inventions, most conspicuously the story of "an officer by the name of Worousky" whose legs had been amputated after battle, but who was rescued by Kempelen and smuggled back to Russia inside the machine.[o] Standage sums it up: "Robert-Houdin's entire account must be dismissed as fiction."[149] Paul Metzner remarks that "This story, contained in [Robert-Houdin's] very popular autobiography, seems to have revived interest in the Turk."[8] The fiction was subsequently repeated as fact, notably inEncyclopædia Britannica: the 11th edition,[150] and in other editions as well.[p]
This tale of concealing a Pole named Worousky within the Turk "had the legs its protagonist lacked".[153] Sheryl N. Hamilton mentions "dramatic plays, at least three novels, and even a silent film" deriving from this fantasy of Robert-Houdin's.[154] One such novel is Sheila E. Braine'sThe Turkish Automaton (1898).[155][156][157] Another isHenry Dupuy-Mazuel'sLe Joueur d'échecs (1926), published in English translation as bothThe Chess Player andThe Devil Is an Empress.[158][157][q] Plays includeJules Adenis and Octave Gastineau'sLa Czarine, first performed in 1868.[160][161][162] The silent film deriving from Robert-Houdin's fictional version via Dupuy-Mazuel's isRaymond Bernard's featureThe Chess Player (Le Joueur d'échecs, 1927), in which a young Polish nationalist on the run from the occupying Russians is hidden inside a chess-playing automaton.[163][164][165]
There have also been derivatives independent of Robert-Houdin.Ambrose Bierce's 1899 short story "Moxon's master"[166] is a morbid tale about a chess-playing automaton that resembles the Turk, as described by Poe.[167]Gene Wolfe's 1977science fiction short story "The marvelous brass chessplaying automaton"[168] is about a device very similar to the Turk.[169]Robert Löhr's 2007 novelThe Chess Machine[170] (published in the UK asThe Secrets of the Chess Machine) focuses on the man inside the machine, a dwarf named Tibor.[171][172]
In the first of hisTheses on the Philosophy of History,Walter Benjamin wrote of the Mechanical Turk that "one can imagine a philosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called 'historical materialism' is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight."[173]
A film inspired by the Turk isTod Browning'sWhite Tiger (1923). Its three main characters, who find themselves partners in crime, include one who is both a "double-crossing hood" and a "genius at chess". Essential to the trio's scheme to make a killing is "the chess-playing Turk", whose cabinet serves to conceal either its operator or a burglar.[174] There have been at least two television films based on the Turk. A 13-episode French–Italian–Austrian–Hungarian series,Les Évasions célèbres (Famous Escapes [fr;it;pl]) was broadcast in France onORTF in 1972 as well as elsewhere (e.g. East Germany in 1977). One 55-minute episode,Le Joueur d'échecs (Der Schachspieler), directed byChristian-Jaque, has Napoleon (Robert Manuel) encounter the automaton in Kempelen's castle, play against it, and lose.[175]El jugador de ajedrez orLe Joueur d'échecs de Maelzel, a 54-minute television film produced in Mexico and France and directed byJuan Luis Buñuel, was first broadcast in 1981 as one ofa series of films [fr;it] based on Poe.[176][177]
From 1984 to 1989,John Gaughan, an American manufacturer of equipment for magicians based in Los Angeles, spent $120,000 (equivalent to $360,000 in 2024) building his own version of Kempelen's machine.[178] The machine uses the original chessboard, which had been stored separately and was not destroyed in the fire. The first public display of Gaughan's Turk was in November 1989 at theLos Angeles Conference on Magic History. The machine was presented much as Kempelen had presented the original, except that its opponent was acomputer running a chess program.[179]
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